Denis Kukhtin will be in great danger even if a bone marrow donor is found for him in Germany (donor search costs ˆ15,000) and indispensable medications are bought (ˆ15,000 more). It is a huge risk for Denis’ life, but unless he has transplantation, he will hardly live till his fourth birthday.
Photo: Alexey Kudenko
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Fourth Birthday
// Denis Kukhtin needs bone marrow transplantation
Denis is three and a half years old. He has early recurrent acute lymphoblastic leucosis. That is, leucosis returned soon after chemotherapy, within just two months, and it is a very bad sign. Even with bone marrow transplantation, early recurrent leucosis gets cured only in 40 percent of cases. However, there is hope that Denis’ doctors in Saratov, who had treated him before he was brought to the Moscow Institute for Children’s Cancer and Blood Diseases, were mistaken, and that the boy was simply undercured and is not suffering a relapse. If it is so, Denis will have more than 40 out of 100 chances to survive.
Denis is sitting on a bed in the Institute for Children’s Cancer and Blood Diseases. He cannot get off the bed because of the catheter inserted into his subclavian vein, connecting him to a drip bulb via a plastic tube. The boy is telling me a story about a car and a bus. Denis says he tore off the car’s wheels and road police officers ran up and scolded him.
“Are you telling me about a real car or a toy?” I ask.
“About a real one,” assures Denis. “An iron car. With rubber wheels. I tore them off.”
“How did you manage to tear off the wheels of a real car? Are you an athlete or a car mechanic? Did your doctors let you go out to the street?”
Denis insists the car was real and the wheels were real. Speaking of the street, the boy says that his home is there on the street, and looks wistfully into the window. Denis’ mother smiles and whispers to me that the boy has not left his ward for six months already, and has simply forgotten there exist real big cars. So, he thinks toy cars of iron are real, while plastic cars are toys in his classification.
“What about the road police officers then? Were they as small as Tom Thumb?” I ask.
“No, the road policemen were big. They came in the bus,” the child says, pointing emphatically at a toy bus.
The toy buzzes as if it has a small strong diesel engine inside. The bus buzzes, but Denis assures me that it actually wishes him happy birthday, in English.
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For those who are encountering the Russian Aid Fund for the first time
The Russian Aid Fund was founded in 1996 to assistant the authors of desperate letters sent to Kommersant. We verify the letters with the help of local authorities, then publish the letters in Kommersant, Domovoi magazine and on the site www.rusfond.ru. If you decide to help, you will receive the banking details of the authors of the letters, and the rest is up to you. You just help you help. This approach has been popular with our readers. More than $8.4 million has been collected. We also organize relief efforts during national catastrophes, for 53 families of the miners who died in the Zyryanovskaya Mine in Kuzbass, 57 families of the policemen who burned to death in Samara, 153 families of the victims of explosions in Moscow and Volgodonsk, 118 families of the sailors who died on the submarine Kursk, 52 families of the hostages who died in the seizure of the performance of Nord Ost, 39 families of those who died in the Moscow Metro on February 6, 2004, 100 families who suffered losses in Beslan. The Fund is the winner of the Silver Archer award.
The Russian Aid Fund
Address: P.O. Box 50, 125252 Moscow, Russia
www.rusfond.ru
e-mail: rfp@kommersant.ru
Telephone: +7 (095) 943-9135
Telephone/fax: +7 (095) 158-6904
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I’m thinking the boy might be talking deliriously, but his mother smiles: Denis feels well today. Yesterday, however, when the nurse began injecting via drip bulb a drug indispensable for blood cancer treatment but very toxic, Denis suddenly turned pale, fell back, gripped his throat, cried “It hurts! It hurts!” and fainted. Doctors, who ran up to help, measured the child’s arterial blood pressure: 40/11. It was anaphylactic shock. Third anaphylactic shock in the life of a boy who is three and a half years old. Denis suffered first shock in Saratov, which made his doctors cancel treatment with the indispensable drug. So, it is unclear now whether Denis really has an early relapse or whether his first leucosis was simply undercured. Taking blasts’ return as a relapse, the doctors in Saratov told Denis’ mother that her son had no chances, that he wouldn’t survive another chemo course, and discouraged her from going to Moscow, saying that doctors in Moscow treat with the same drugs and according to the same programs.
“No, it’s completely different in Moscow. I saw that everything is different, when I witnessed the reanimation in our ward yesterday,” said Denis’ mother.
After seeing the doctors dexterously carry out the reanimation right in the ward, after finding that none of doctors and nurses demanded gifts or money from her, after being reprimanded by doctors for letting the child crawl on the floor and then put unwashed hands into mouth, apparently the woman believed there are gods and not doctors in front of her. Yet, the truth is they are doctors and not gods, though. Before taking me to Denis’ ward, the department’s chief doctor Dmitry Litvinov shrugged sadly and estimated survival chances: if it is an early relapse – 40%, if Saratov doctors were mistaken – chances are slightly higher, 50%, or maybe 60%, or might be 70%. The boy will be in great danger even if a bone marrow donor is found for him in Germany (donor search costs ˆ15,000) and indispensable medications are bought (ˆ15,000 more). It is a huge risk for Denis’ life, but unless he has transplantation, he will hardly live till his fourth birthday.
His little bus is driving over the bed, buzzing. Denis points at the bus and asks:
“Did you hear it? It wishes me a happy birthday!”
I’m thinking the boy is talking deliriously after the anaphylactic shock he suffered recently. Yet, there is a little button on the toy’s top.
“Listen!” says Denis.
He presses the button, and the bus utters:
“Happy birthday!”
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789,070 rubles needed to save 3-year-old Denis Kukhtin
“It is a surprisingly quiet and touching little child,” said Dr. Dmitry Litvinov, head of the 16th cancer and blood diseases department at the Russian Clinical Hospital for Children. Denis Kukhtin has acute lymphoblastic leucosis aggravated by an early relapse. The only cure for such patients is bone marrow transplantation from a healthy donor. None of Denis’ relatives is eligible to be his donor. So, a non-relative donor search is needed. As usual, Russian blood cancer doctors order the donor search in the European data bank (the Morsch Fund, Germany). With the guarantees of the clinic and the Russian Aid Fund, Germans agreed to start searching immediately. Doctors sent Denis’ blood samples by airplane to Germany yesterday. If, fortunately, the donor is found quickly, the boy will be immediately taken to transplantation department. “Here, at least, will be no difficulties,” said Dr. Litvinov. Beside the bone marrow, Denis will also need medications: Cancidas, Vifend in bottles and pills, and immunoglobulin. The transplantation itself is free, but the donor search and medications will amount to 1,072,200 rubles. Denis Kukhtin’s parents do not have that sum of money. “We are absolutely unable to raise that much money,” wrote Vika Kukhtina, Denis’ mother, in her letter to our fund. Vika works as head of a veterinary laboratory, her salary is 3,000 rubles per month. Her husband is currently unemployed, and the family also has a 10-year-old daughter.
As always, our permanent partner Ingosstrakh company will donate $11,500 (please see www.rusfond.ru for more information). That is, 789,070 rubles more is needed. Euro donations can be sent directly to the Morsch Fund. For ruble donations, we opened an account in Sberbank in Moscow for Vika Vladimirovna Kukhtina. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Expert group of the Russian Aid Fund
Valery Panyushkin, specially for the Russian Aid Fund
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 09, 2007
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